Make Your Personal Facebook Profile Business-Ready

If you want to keep your personal identity completely separate from your business, then this post is not for you. If you think you’re only going to use your personal profile to promote your business, then this post is not for you either and you should definitely check out this webinar to see why that’s a bad idea.

If you are looking for a way to make sure people know what you for a living and provide them plenty of ways to see what you can do for them, then read on!

Profile Photo

This is your first impression on Facebook. This photo is what will show up in groups when you’re networking, if you link your personal profile to your FB page, when you’re tagged in a post and people hover over your name, and what people will see when they are searching for you. That means it should be a nice photo!

It doesn’t have to be professional (mine is currently a selfie that I took in the car on the way to a workshop I was facilitating), but you may want to keep these tips in mind:

Use a current photo - if your photo is more than a couple years old or you’ve significantly changed your looks people may have a hard time recognizing you

Use a headshot so that people can recognize your lovely face

Try to avoid photos where you can see the shoulder(s) of the people you’ve cropped out beside you

If you want to, you can add a description to your profile photo (what people will see when they click on it) to tell people a bit more about what you can offer, your business details, and any helpful links.

Bonus Tip: don’t use the same photo on your personal profile and your business page - people will get confused when trying to tag you and may tag your personal account instead of your business page.

Bonus Tip: once you’ve selected your profile image, try to stick with it, especially if you do a lot of networking in groups. People often recognize a photo before they recognize a name, so if you change your profile photo often it could leave your fellow group members confused about who you are.

Here’s how:

Go to your timeline (not the FB homepage/newsfeed)

Hover over your existing profile photo (or blank silhouette)

Click ‘Update Profile Picture’ or ‘Edit’

Select an existing photo or upload one from your computer or camera roll

Once your photo is updated, click on it (desktop only)

Click ‘Add a description’

Enter any info you need to and click ‘Done Editing’

Cover Image

If you *are* your business, you might want to use this real estate as well to make sure your friends and family - and anyone who ends up on your profile - know what you can do. This is just my personal opinion (and of course it entirely depends on who you’ve got as Facebook friends), but I feel like this is more appropriate for businesses that are consumer-focused rather than B2B.

Your cover image does show up when people hover over your tagged name, but it doesn’t get as much visibility so you should feel free to switch it up more often. Think about changing it to something business-related when you’ve got something exciting going on, and then changing it back to something personal when it’s done.

Definitely add a description to your cover image, especially if it’s business focused.

Here’s how:

Go to your timeline (not the FB homepage/newsfeed)

Hover over your existing cover photo (or blank silhouette)

Click ‘Update Cover Photo’ or ‘Edit’

Select an existing photo or upload one from your computer or camera roll

Once your photo is updated, click on it (desktop only) or tap on it and select ‘View Profile Cover’ (mobile only)

Click ‘Add a description’ (desktop only) or tap the 3 dots in the corner and select ‘Edit Caption’ (mobile only)

Enter any info you need to and click ‘Done Editing’ or ‘Save’

Your Intro

You can add more info that will be visible to anyone browsing your profile. Some of these sections are only public, and some can have the privacy settings customized, so be aware of what you do and don’t want people to know without friending you.

Intro

This shows up right under your profile photo. You’re limited to 100 characters so if you have a short mission or vision statement this is the perfect place to put it.

Links do not work in this section, but emojis do :)

Here’s how:

From your profile, click the + icon to add an intro or hover and click the edit icon to change an existing intro

Enter your information

Click ‘Save’

Workplace

This shows up under your intro. At minimum, you should add your business and business page here. There are some restrictions around this section which can pose challenges, so sometimes you just have to get as close as possible to the right info.

Company - Facebook wants to link to the company’s Facebook page. If you are adding positions for businesses that don’t have pages, Facebook will prompt you to create a generic ‘holder’ page. There is no way around this if you want this position to appear on your timeline.

Position - Again, Facebook wants you to use positions that are already in their database (from other users). If you are adding something that doesn’t exist, you’ll be prompted to create that position.

City/Town - This is mandatory, which can be tricky for people working with online businesses. In general I just list where the headquarters are located. This will not show up in the intro section.

Description - Will not show up in the intro section, so it’s up to you if you want to fill it in.

Bonus Tip: if you have multiple current positions, they will appear in the order from most recent start date to oldest start date. If you want them to show up in a specific order, you’ll have to fudge the start dates, which may or may not be a good idea. Past positions that you choose to display will appear under all of the current positions.

Here’s how:

From your profile, click the edit icon in this section to update existing positions or go to About > Work and Education

Click ‘Add a workplace’

Enter the company, position, city/town, and time period

Click ‘Save Changes’. Repeat for any other positions you want to add

Return to your timeline and click the edit icon

Check the box beside the workplace you just added to get it to appear in your intro section

Click ‘Save’

Featured Images

These show up under your workplaces and pulls photos that have already been added to your Facebook profile. You can add up to 5 photos here that will appear in a grid. Pick photos that are business-related.

If you’re not happy with any of the existing photos, go ahead and upload the photos you want to a post. If you don’t want to bother your friends with a bunch of photo uploads, make sure to change the privacy setting to “Only Me” before you post.

Here’s how:

From your profile, click the edit icon in this section or click ‘Add Featured Photos’

Select the photos you want to appear

Click ‘Save’

Links

This shows up under your featured images and is where you add links to your website(s) and social media profiles.

Add as many relevant links as you want, just be aware of a few things when it comes to the website links:

Longer links will be truncated when they are displayed because of the width of the sidebar (so if you have a lot of links that all start with the same 30-40 characters people will not be able to tell the difference between them by sight)

You can’t label the links, so if you have a link that has a lot of numbers or random characters and people can’t figure out what it links to, they likely won’t click - you may be able to solve this by creating custom shortlinks with a service like bit.ly

Here’s how:

From your profile, go to About > Contact and Basic Info

Click the edit icon in the Websites section

Add the URLs you want to appear

Ensure privacy = public

Click ‘Save Changes’

Click the edit icon in the Social Links Section

In the dropdown, select the network you want to add, then type your username in the text box

Ensure privacy = public

Click ‘Save Changes’

Note: if the social network you want to add is not in the dropdown, you can add it to the Websites section.

View as the public

When all is said and done, view your profile as the public would see it to make sure everything looks the way you want it to, and then network away!

I am a social media trainer and certified coach who specializes in helping women entrepreneurs uncover their social media confidence by equipping them with the skills, tools, and resources to be effective and productive on social media! I offer both group & 1:1 training and coaching, and am developing online courses for entrepreneurs to learn at their own pace. If you’d like to learn more about my style and get a ton of free resources, tips, and coaching you can become a student of Social Media School for Heartful Entrepreneurs at zero cost!